Nicole Tasker Woods

Aidan has graduated to baby oatmeal because he is such a BIG BOY now! Although it wasn’t a lot of food, he ate about a dozen baby bites of the oatmeal mixed with breast milk and pureed pears. He seemed to enjoy it, but it has only been two days, so we will see if he continues to enjoy it over the rest of this week. If he does, then I see some prune juice in his future. The poor little guy has such a hard time pooping and is going 7 days without a booty squirt and that just isn’t right!

Ryan has been out of town on business since Tuesday and he missed this milestone of feeding Aidan his first bite of solid food. But I know there will be many milestones ahead and I look forward to both of us being a part of them.

Aidan slept through the night last night, yay!

He had teased us about a month ago by sleeping through the night for 7 days in a row–it was pure bliss! Then on the eighth day, he woke up twice in the night, we were so shocked. We didn’t know what happened to our sleeping boy.

Since that day, he has woken up once in the night, usually between 3:00 – 5:00am. On really bad nights, he wakes up at 1:00am and then again at 4:00am. We were so concerned that he wasn’t getting the right kind of sleep if he kept waking up so often when for a week’s time, he was sleeping for 10-12 hours straight! I understand if he was waking up hungry, but we could tell that sometimes he had just woken up because something startled him.

After thinking about it, we came to the conclusion that he was probably cold and was waking up because he was uncomfortable. The evening temps have dropped drastically since the summer ended so it wouldn’t surprise me if that was the reason.

Last night we decided to attempt to increase his comfort level by lying him on the afghan that my Grammie Allen made him. It is the biggest & thickest afghan I received at my NH baby shower and it made his sleeping space so warm. After his bath & bedtime bottle, it doesn’t take long to rock him to sleep. Sometimes he dozes with the bottle in his mouth. Once he’s out for about 5 minutes, we swaddle him up really tight so he looks like a delicious baby burrito and then continue to rock or sway with him for another 10 minutes. Then we set him in his crib and swaddle him one more time with another one of his afghans.

It seems like a lot, but I tell ya what, being able to sleep straight through the night because Aidan never woke up was awesome. Getting a solid 6 1/2 hours was incredible and I felt so refreshed. And I’m sure Aidan feels better too!

Variety is the Children’s Charity of Southern California. I have participated in this charity over the past 7 years in one way or another since it has heavy emphasis in the film industry and I work for a movie studio.

December 4th is the 2nd annual Santa Walk, which will consist of walking laps around the Westfield Topanga Mall. All of the film studios encourage their staff and their families to participate in the event and I heard that last year’s event was not only fun, but a huge success in raising funds for Variety.

This year I have decided to create a team–lovingly called ‘Aidan’s Elves’–and I am collecting donations so that when Aidan & I dress up like Santas with the rest of the masses, we can raise money for a good cause. In case you don’t know what Variety is or does, it is a charity that provides lifesaving support for physically-challenged, abused, and disadvantaged children in Southern California.

If you would like to donate, please click Aidan’s Elves and you will be directed to a secure website to make a donation–any amount is going to help, even if you can only donate $1.

If you are in the Los Angeles area and would like to be one of Aidan’s Elves, please email me (nicki.woods44@yahoo.com) and I will send you simple instructions for how to become a member of the team.

The coolest part about participating in this event (where all you have to do is walk, seriously, it’s not brain surgery!) is you will receive a Santa costume upon registering so you can blend in with the sea of Santas…

My little man slept from 8:30pm – 7:00am the past three nights, I’m so proud! He’s getting so big! I remember fumbling in the dark to warm a bottle while Ryan changed his diaper with one eye closed…and now we are no longer woken up by a baby’s cry, but the ding-dong of our alarm clocks. I love sleep.

I’ve been on an emotional roller coaster for the past 10 days. Last Saturday I heard from my nanny that she wanted more money and less hours. As much as I loved her and how she cared for Aidan, after much debate and number crunching, Ryan & I agreed that we couldn’t give her what she was asking for and we had to let her go.

Making that phone call was one of the hardest things I had to do. As I play it back in my head now, I am confident that my voice was steady, but when I hung up I broke down and cried. Finding this nanny was difficult when I was only a few months pregnant–but that’s why I started looking for childcare so early. I did not want to do the nanny search when my son was 3 months old and I was back at work full-time–I wanted it all in place before even returning to work. But you can’t always get what you want. Not only am I sad to not be able to work with our first nanny ever again, but the thought of going through the nanny search a second time is stressful and overwhelming.

As a mom, I have learned that there will be stressful moments and even emotional ones when it comes to my child. I think it is important to allow myself the brief moment to be stressed and sad, but then I have to find a solution to the problem at hand.

I immediately re-posted the live-out nanny position on care.com (which is how we found the first nanny) and within an hour, we started getting email submissions from women in our area who were interested in the job. The good thing about this website is that you can screen the applicants prior to returning their emails. You can see their picture, review their job experience and get a background check and references from their online profiles.

We interviewed 2 people, but the first woman we met with was the first one who inquired about the job and she’s the one we ended up hiring. I am smarter the second time around and have learned some valuable lessons about employing a live-out nanny. The most important being the realization that this won’t be the last nanny we hire.

My bosoms are billowy
Like pillows for your sleepy head

My mammaries are abundant
Giving warm food for your grumbly tummy

My knockers are aloft
Creating a tepid valley for your baby face

My funbags are squishy
Like balloons, cushioning your fall

My gazongas are engorged
Reminding me they are really yours

Copyright © 2011 N.E. Tasker

My lovely baby boy slept from 9pm until 5:30am–what a good boy!

And as another day goes by and Aidan grows bigger and bigger, we pass yet another milestone…

…he now has to lie lengthwise in his crib. We can no longer swaddle him width-wise because his head touches one side while his feet touch the other. What a big boy!

It is crazy how well you can function on little-to-no sleep.

Two weeks ago, Aidan was sleeping from 8:30pm until 4am and then back to sleep around 4:30am until 7:30am. This is a rock-star schedule because we can still get back to sleep and function at about 90% the following day at work.

But when I woke up Monday morning this week and sleepily counted the number of hours of sleep I got the night before, I came to a whopping 3. Yikes! I was really worried that I would not be able to function that day at work. With Mondays being our busiest day and my boss being out of the office the entire week, I was certain that I would hit the wall mid-morning and disaster would ensue. However, it wasn’t bad at all.

Then Tuesday morning came and I got about 5 hours of sleep. Better than the night before, but my body slowly started to shut down by 3pm that day. I rallied in the late afternoon, but anxiously laid my head on my pillow that night.

Wednesday was the worst! I got roughly 5 hours, maybe 6–which is more than I had gotten in the past two nights, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t totally gassed by 10am on Wednesday. I barely made it to lunchtime without nodding off for a split second at my desk. Then Ryan and I met up for lunch where we tried to eat in silence, but couldn’t stop complaining about how damn tired we were!

We got into the silly-tired-state-of-mind and started joking about selling our baby. Aidan had woken up the night before at midnight, then 4am, then 6am. It was no fun. No fun at all.

Last night, however, the little A man woke up at 1am and then proceeded to sleep soundly until 7am. I left the house at 6:45am so I was able to take Cali pee, pump, shower, dress & make-up myself all before he woke up. Which is the most ideal situation–if he HAS to wake up during the nighttime hours, then it might as well be only once–and in the middle of the night so we can still get ready for work in the morning. As a result, I felt refreshed for the first time in 3 days.

Hopefully this is the first of many nights like this. But with a little boy who will do as he pleases, I know I can’t hold my breath.